Posted by
michael
on from the obligatory-earth-day-post dept.
i22y writes "With Greasel instead of Diesel in your tank, you can pull up to Jack-In-The-Box and fill up both your stomach and your gas tank. Run your car on old fryer grease and vegetable oil! Obligatory pictures and FAQ."
Doesn't seem too amazing to me...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The original car engines could run on just about anything - until the big diesel and gasoline companies bought the patent for the engine, and converted it to run on only what it does today.
Seems to me like this is just a step back towards the original engines which could run on just about anything.
Re:Doesn't seem too amazing to me...
by
Hieronymus+Howard
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Apparently, the Dr Rudolf Diesel ran his original engines on peanut oil
University of Victoria, in BC Canada, already had a Veggie Van fully operational. I think the diesel engine itself is unmodified, but they had a special filtering process so that they could use leftover McDonald's vegetable oil...
Re:It's already been done
by
chrisseaton
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Here y'all go, it's already been done in Wales (2002) (it wasn't illegal) and Tokyo (1998).
Re:It's already been done
by
Hieronymus+Howard
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It's not illegal in the UK if you pay tax on the biodiesel. The problem (as far as the government was concerned) is that people were running their cars on fish'n'chip oil without paying any fuel tax.
Asda (Walmart) in the UK now run their fleet of delivery lorries on recycled donut frying oil.
Yes, it's legit, bio-diesel even predates petroleum by about 15 years. It is still used in farm machinery, and here in Northern California, it's slowly becoming a fad, I'm seeing lots of bio-mercedes and bio run vw passats. It burns on par with petroleum based diesel, it's not any better for the environment, but it's great for the agri-industry and bad for the oil industry.
To all those saying this has been done before
by
Crasoum
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Read the Faqs, one of the first questions says..
Did Greasel discover that diesel engines will run on cooking oil?
No. The first diesel engines (invented by Rudolf Diesel in the late 1800's) were actually designed to run on plant oils. Immediately after Rudolf's untimely demise, his colleagues (who were just then tapping the resources of petro-based fuel sources) swept his veggie ideas under the rug and actually converted his design to run on petro-based 'diesel' fuel (which they were nice enough to name after him).
Blarg
PS the puns on the greasel site are pretty lame...
This isn't new
by
maddskillz
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This has been done before, but it's cool that other are trying it too. There are some great links to Biodiesel sites too. It's nice to see some people trying to take some baby steps, towards environmentally friendly vehicles, instead of just trying to go straight to the top, as is the case with hydrogen powered vehicles, which are great, but too expensive
This is OLD news dude
by
madmarcel
·
· Score: 1, Informative
<> I've posted comments about this subject before...so I'll just repeat myself..AGAIN:
<long rant>
1) This has been talked about before. This is VERY old news. Remember the article about the motorcycle that ran on 'bio-diesel' a while ago? (E-cycle or something or other...they must've had a LOT of marketing weasels;^)
2) 'Greasel'? Hmm...they must have a marketing weasel. Commonly known as 'bio-diesel'. There are a variety of oils that can be used as bio-diesel, some of which ARE liquid at 'normal' temperatures.
3) There was a student on/from some pacific island, who figured out that you could run diesel cars on coconut oil. The difference was that with the local ambient temperatures he didn't have to worry about heating and keeping the coconut oil fluid. (and he was never heard from again...)
4) There was a guy in Europe about 10 years ago who also had cars running on bio-diesel..I can't remember what kind of vegetable oil he used, I think he extracted it from some weed/plant. There was talk of growing the weed/plant (koolzaad?) commercially...but he was never heard of again. Happens to all these geezers who come up with the idea of running cars on bio-diesel - funny that... (No conspiracy here, sorry, probably just lack of funding, lack of commercial interest.)
5) I glanced over the article, but eh...wouldn't you need to filter the 'greasel'? BTW most grease from deep-fries can be recycled. There are companies here that do it. (here not being US:)
6) The one thing that I did NOT see mentioned on that website (after a quick glance at the FAQ):
CARS THAT RUN ON biodiesel/greasel STINK! Well, so I heard anyway...I've read articles that describe the smell from the emmissions somewhat similar to the smell of fried donuts.
Cleaner emmissions? yes please, but I'd say you'd get pretty fed up with the smell after a while. (Imagine being stuck in a traffic jam behind a car that runs on bio-diesel;P)
Having said all that, bio-diesel is probably the most suitable replacement for petrol in my opinion, as it requires little or no change to the existing petrol-delivery infrastructure all around the world. Nobody will get fired, no expensive changes to petrol-stations...perfect. Although I'm pretty sure you could cook up some homebrew bio-diesel in your backyard and put the petrol-companies out of business;)
</rant>
Wheh...time to go and put my fingers in some cold water;^)
Re:Cost of Veggie Oil
by
ikeleib
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Kitchen grease already has a street value. It's called yellow grease and is used for making animal feeds. Many restaraunts have a contract with a yellow grease company. They often have locks on their grease traps to make sure that spurious pickups don't occur. There is, in fact, yellow grease theft and smuggling.
Re:Cost of Veggie Oil
by
Exocet
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I'm on the board of directors for the GoBiodiesel Cooperative in Portland, Oregon.
We have priced out what it costs to produce biodiesel (as a cooperative). It costs us approximately $1/gallon in pure supplies (plus electricity) to produce biodiesel. We're just starting (first test batch last weekend!) but are well aware of the costs. We're using methanol right now but would like to switch to the more expensive but more enviro-friendly ethanol. We'll see what happens on that front. Oh, and once we're done producing test batches with lye we will be switching over to...sodium methoxide (???). I can't recall what it will be, to be honest.
We will need to recoup the costs of the processor, the building it's located in, etc. Plus, we'd like to pay volunteers a small amount for their time.
We plan on selling biodiesel for approximately USD$1.25-$1.50.
If you're interested, visit the GoBiodiesel Cooperative web site and learn more about what we're doing.
It is in fact real and scientifically sound (tried submitting it earlier but got rejected...); widespread deployment of these plants could eliminate the need for landfills, while also making oil dirt cheap. As an added bonus, they can refine previously unusable types of petroleum, and break down inorganic substances into reusable raw minerals as well. Understandably, Japan for one is VERY interested in this... Philadelphia is looking at deploying these plants as well as soon as they see how viable it is on a larger scale.
This is not Biodiesel. This engine mod runs on straight vegetable oil without any processing other than filtering. Grease is usually too viscous to be used directly but this system preheats it to make it flow better.
--
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
I can assure you that it is legit. Apparently they're doing a nationwide rolling tour as they stopped by the town I'm currently living in. To get fuel for the next stop they dropped by the local Chinese take-out place and relieved them of some of their waste grease. They pulled out of town leaving an exhaust trail that smelled like shrimp fried rice.:-)
Very cool...
-- G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
Re:A few years late on the news front
by
eodmightier
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yeah you can run biodiesel on the newer VW TDI engines without any mods. Really nice setup.
So you can pickup a new Golf TDI and go biodiesel crazy.
But this article is a bit different since it deals with raw cooking oil without any processing done to it.
-- -Eod
Greasecar.com sells a kit for most diesel vehicles
by
Radi-0-head
·
· Score: 2, Informative
There is a company that sells a full conversion kit for diesel vehicles.
Check out www.greasecar.com
Re:Cost of Veggie Oil
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Iraq was a mistake?
by
hey
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Maybe the invasion of Iraq for the oil was
unnecessary. Next we can invalid a country
for the veg oil.
Not enough crops
by
theedge318
·
· Score: 4, Informative
BioDiesel is a great idea, but there is a very good reason why it hasn't taken off. BioDisiel promoters are right about it being great for the environment, but no one is willing to develop it for production (even the very interested VW).
Reason, if BioDiesel were to challenge regular gasoline/petrol, it would require a lot of vegetables. While it is true that the U.S. is actually over-producing crops, and thus having to pay farmers not to grow crops. There still isn't enough plants to produce BioDiesel for everyone, even if all of those fields were fully cultivated.
Facts Canada produces 50 mil. tons of relevant crops, and it would only need 10 mil. tons to power a country of BioDiesel cars. However the rest of the world does not have the same grain surplus as Canada, most other countries are at a deficit, and purchase Canada's surplus. The US. production although higher, has smaller surplus levels, and greater demand for combustible products.
-- Sig Nazi- "No Sig for you, come back 1 year."
Re:Not enough crops
by
noeffred
·
· Score: 3, Informative
In Austria this is not entirely true. "Bio Diesel" (which was in fact created here) is very popular for agricutlutral vehicles, such as harvesting machines and tractors. Many farmers do nothing but grow crops for the bio diesel production. A Friend of mine runs his car off salad oil which works just as good. You have to add some "normal" Diesel though in either case. Your engine greses a bit faster with these. And not every engine is able to run properly on Bio-Diesel (so some say)
By the way, when a car powered by bio diesel passes by, the fumes smell like french fries. I mean how cool is that!
Re:Not enough crops
by
L0J46K
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Where did I get 150 years? While I studied Electrical Engineering I took a class called "Energy in Society" and in several documents there was info leading to that conclusion, including info from the Department of Energy. Maybe the number is off by +/- 10%, but 17 years, thats ridiculous. If oil doesnt come from the ground where does it come from? Even ocean rigs get their oil from under the sea floor. I never said we could not be self sufficient, but how many people do you know that give a crap about it.
Biodiesel vs the SVO systems
by
Luckster7
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This is not biodiesel. Biodiesel will run in any diesel engine w/o modifications. Most of the diesel sold in Europe is or contains biodiesel. Biodiesel is made by taking oil (such as used veggie oil) and mixing it with sodium methydroxide (Lye and Menthanol). The glycerine seperates out and what is left (minus more filtering, called "washing") is biodiesel.
This is often refered to as "SVO" - Straight Vegetable Oil. The Gresel system requires two tanks for starting and stopping on regular diesel. I've seen systems that do not require any diesel. They (simply) involve: 1. Replacing the injectors with ones that have a larger bore. 2. Changing the thermostat to one that stays on to a higher temperatature 3. Replacing the glow plugs with heavier duty ones 4. Installing an electric fuel line heater 5. Installing a heat exchanger
When the engine is cold the electric heater warms the fuel, allowing it to flow through the injectors properly. Once the engine heats up the thermostat shuts off which turns off the electric fuel line heater and the glow plugs. By then the heat exchanger uses the heat from the engine coolant to keep the fuel visocity low. I believe the main difference between this system and what gresel offers is the electric fuel line heater. Once you do the changeover you can still run off of diesel, but you're going to be dumping more fuel in the engine (larger injectors) so your horsepower will go up and your milage down.
-- Deuteronomy 13:06-9
Re:Turkey guts & other offal
by
Foresto
·
· Score: 2, Informative
"for those who don't want to look at the paper-based article in Discover"
Slashdot Mirror
The original car engines could run on just about anything - until the big diesel and gasoline companies bought the patent for the engine, and converted it to run on only what it does today.
Seems to me like this is just a step back towards the original engines which could run on just about anything.
University of Victoria, in BC Canada, already had a Veggie Van fully operational. I think the diesel engine itself is unmodified, but they had a special filtering process so that they could use leftover McDonald's vegetable oil ...
Here y'all go, it's already been done in Wales (2002) (it wasn't illegal) and Tokyo (1998).
It's not illegal in the UK if you pay tax on the biodiesel. The problem (as far as the government was concerned) is that people were running their cars on fish'n'chip oil without paying any fuel tax.
Asda (Walmart) in the UK now run their fleet of delivery lorries on recycled donut frying oil.
HH
--
Yes, it's legit, bio-diesel even predates petroleum by about 15 years. It is still used in farm machinery, and here in Northern California, it's slowly becoming a fad, I'm seeing lots of bio-mercedes and bio run vw passats. It burns on par with petroleum based diesel, it's not any better for the environment, but it's great for the agri-industry and bad for the oil industry.
Read the Faqs, one of the first questions says..
Did Greasel discover that diesel engines will run on cooking oil?
No. The first diesel engines (invented by Rudolf Diesel in the late 1800's) were actually designed to run on plant oils. Immediately after Rudolf's untimely demise, his colleagues (who were just then tapping the resources of petro-based fuel sources) swept his veggie ideas under the rug and actually converted his design to run on petro-based 'diesel' fuel (which they were nice enough to name after him).
Blarg
PS the puns on the greasel site are pretty lame...
This has been done before, but it's cool that other are trying it too.
There are some great links to Biodiesel sites too. It's nice to see some people trying to take some baby steps, towards environmentally friendly vehicles, instead of just trying to go straight to the top, as is the case with hydrogen powered vehicles, which are great, but too expensive
<> I've posted comments about this subject before...so I'll just repeat myself..AGAIN:
;^)
:)
;P)
;)
;^)
<long rant>
1) This has been talked about before. This is VERY old news. Remember the article about the motorcycle that ran on 'bio-diesel' a while ago?
(E-cycle or something or other...they must've had a LOT of marketing weasels
2) 'Greasel'? Hmm...they must have a marketing weasel. Commonly known as 'bio-diesel'. There are a variety of oils that can be used as bio-diesel, some of which ARE liquid at 'normal' temperatures.
3) There was a student on/from some pacific island, who figured out that you could run diesel cars on coconut oil. The difference was that with the local ambient temperatures he didn't have to worry about heating and keeping the coconut oil fluid. (and he was never heard from again...)
4) There was a guy in Europe about 10 years ago who also had cars running on bio-diesel..I can't remember what kind of vegetable oil he used, I think he extracted it from some weed/plant. There was talk of growing the weed/plant (koolzaad?) commercially...but he was never heard of again.
Happens to all these geezers who come up with the idea of running cars on bio-diesel - funny that...
(No conspiracy here, sorry, probably just lack of funding, lack of commercial interest.)
5) I glanced over the article, but eh...wouldn't you need to filter the 'greasel'? BTW most grease from deep-fries can be recycled. There are companies here that do it. (here not being US
6) The one thing that I did NOT see mentioned on that website (after a quick glance at the FAQ):
CARS THAT RUN ON biodiesel/greasel STINK!
Well, so I heard anyway...I've read articles that describe the smell from the emmissions somewhat similar to the smell of fried donuts.
Cleaner emmissions? yes please, but I'd say you'd
get pretty fed up with the smell after a while.
(Imagine being stuck in a traffic jam behind a car that runs on bio-diesel
Having said all that, bio-diesel is probably the most suitable replacement for petrol in my opinion, as it requires little or no change to the existing petrol-delivery infrastructure all around the world. Nobody will get fired, no expensive changes to petrol-stations...perfect. Although I'm pretty sure you could cook up some homebrew bio-diesel in your backyard and put the petrol-companies out of business
</rant>
Wheh...time to go and put my fingers in some cold water
Kitchen grease already has a street value. It's called yellow grease and is used for making animal feeds. Many restaraunts have a contract with a yellow grease company. They often have locks on their grease traps to make sure that spurious pickups don't occur. There is, in fact, yellow grease theft and smuggling.
/ 2000/11/ 06/grease_wars/index.html
See:
http://archive.salon.com/business/feature
I'm on the board of directors for the GoBiodiesel Cooperative in Portland, Oregon.
...sodium methoxide (???). I can't recall what it will be, to be honest.
We have priced out what it costs to produce biodiesel (as a cooperative). It costs us approximately $1/gallon in pure supplies (plus electricity) to produce biodiesel. We're just starting (first test batch last weekend!) but are well aware of the costs. We're using methanol right now but would like to switch to the more expensive but more enviro-friendly ethanol. We'll see what happens on that front. Oh, and once we're done producing test batches with lye we will be switching over to
We will need to recoup the costs of the processor, the building it's located in, etc. Plus, we'd like to pay volunteers a small amount for their time.
We plan on selling biodiesel for approximately USD$1.25-$1.50.
If you're interested, visit the GoBiodiesel Cooperative web site and learn more about what we're doing.
Exocet Industries - Taking over the world, one computer at a
It is in fact real and scientifically sound (tried submitting it earlier but got rejected...); widespread deployment of these plants could eliminate the need for landfills, while also making oil dirt cheap. As an added bonus, they can refine previously unusable types of petroleum, and break down inorganic substances into reusable raw minerals as well. Understandably, Japan for one is VERY interested in this... Philadelphia is looking at deploying these plants as well as soon as they see how viable it is on a larger scale.
This is not Biodiesel. This engine mod runs on straight vegetable oil without any processing other than filtering. Grease is usually too viscous to be used directly but this system preheats it to make it flow better.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
I can assure you that it is legit. Apparently they're doing a nationwide rolling tour as they stopped by the town I'm currently living in. To get fuel for the next stop they dropped by the local Chinese take-out place and relieved them of some of their waste grease. They pulled out of town leaving an exhaust trail that smelled like shrimp fried rice. :-)
Very cool...
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
Yeah you can run biodiesel on the newer VW TDI engines without any mods. Really nice setup.
So you can pickup a new Golf TDI and go biodiesel crazy.
But this article is a bit different since it deals with raw cooking oil without any processing done to it.
-Eod
There is a company that sells a full conversion kit for diesel vehicles.
Check out www.greasecar.com
Sodium methoxide is NaOCH3
Maybe the invasion of Iraq for the oil was unnecessary.
Next we can invalid a country for the veg oil.
BioDiesel is a great idea, but there is a very good reason why it hasn't taken off. BioDisiel promoters are right about it being great for the environment, but no one is willing to develop it for production (even the very interested VW).
Reason, if BioDiesel were to challenge regular gasoline/petrol, it would require a lot of vegetables. While it is true that the U.S. is actually over-producing crops, and thus having to pay farmers not to grow crops. There still isn't enough plants to produce BioDiesel for everyone, even if all of those fields were fully cultivated.
Facts Canada produces 50 mil. tons of relevant crops, and it would only need 10 mil. tons to power a country of BioDiesel cars. However the rest of the world does not have the same grain surplus as Canada, most other countries are at a deficit, and purchase Canada's surplus. The US. production although higher, has smaller surplus levels, and greater demand for combustible products.
Sig Nazi- "No Sig for you, come back 1 year."
This is not biodiesel. Biodiesel will run in any diesel engine w/o modifications. Most of the diesel sold in Europe is or contains biodiesel. Biodiesel is made by taking oil (such as used veggie oil) and mixing it with sodium methydroxide (Lye and Menthanol). The glycerine seperates out and what is left (minus more filtering, called "washing") is biodiesel.
This is often refered to as "SVO" - Straight Vegetable Oil. The Gresel system requires two tanks for starting and stopping on regular diesel. I've seen systems that do not require any diesel. They (simply) involve:
1. Replacing the injectors with ones that have a larger bore.
2. Changing the thermostat to one that stays on to a higher temperatature
3. Replacing the glow plugs with heavier duty ones
4. Installing an electric fuel line heater
5. Installing a heat exchanger
When the engine is cold the electric heater warms the fuel, allowing it to flow through the injectors properly. Once the engine heats up the thermostat shuts off which turns off the electric fuel line heater and the glow plugs. By then the heat exchanger uses the heat from the engine coolant to keep the fuel visocity low. I believe the main difference between this system and what gresel offers is the electric fuel line heater. Once you do the changeover you can still run off of diesel, but you're going to be dumping more fuel in the engine (larger injectors) so your horsepower will go up and your milage down.
Deuteronomy 13:06-9
"for those who don't want to look at the paper-based article in Discover"
Here is the online version of the article.
(Apologies if someone already posted the link.)